


You Hold Their Lives in Your Cradled Hands

by InkheartFirebringer



Category: Dishonored (Video Games)
Genre: (It's the only one she cares about anyway), Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Alternate Universe - Hypatia is one of the Marked, F/M, He's so loyal, One of her powers is healing, Poor Vasco always gets the short end of the stick, The Outsider is an arse, This doesn't mean it isn't going to go wrong, What else is new
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-03-09
Updated: 2017-03-09
Packaged: 2018-10-01 17:16:33
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,476
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10194767
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/InkheartFirebringer/pseuds/InkheartFirebringer
Summary: "I've watched you toil and struggle and every life lost chips away a little bit more of your strength. And I wonder…how would you feel if I offered you the chance to save those lives?" An AU where Hypatia is granted the Mark, and along with it, the power to heal. One-shot, spoilers for 'The Good Doctor'.





	

**Author's Note:**

> Disclaimer: I don’t own Dishonored 2. Or Dishonored for that matter.
> 
> A/N: OH THANK GOD IT’S DONE. This fic’s been sitting for the last two weeks on my laptop, only missing the last scene, and I finally got the chance to sit down to do it today. I decided to do an AU where Hypatia is marked by the Outsider, because I was thinking about the fact that there’s badly injured people that you stumble across as Emily or Corvo in both games, and for all their awesome supernatural power, neither of them (or any of the Marked as far we’re aware) can actually heal and are therefore powerless to save their lives. And naturally, this got me thinking, ‘hey, what if one of them could heal?’ and then my brain jumped straight to Hypatia and this fic was born. More info about this in the end notes, but beware spoilers. ^_^

* * *

_Bloodfly Situation Worsens_ , the newspaper headline proclaims, and the only thing Alexandria Hypatia’s tired brain can think is that someone at the Karnaca Gazette has a remarkable gift for the understatement.

She is slumped in her chair, elbow propped on its arm, eyes glazed and barely registering the newspaper lying on the desk in front of her. She can hear the wails of distressed infants and children echoing along the corridor, too young to understand why they’re hurting, and the sound pulls at her heart, and she wants to get up and return to the treatment rooms, but she’s so _tired,_ her skull throbbing in time to her heart –

“– Hypatia!”

She jerks upright, belatedly registering that someone is calling her name. She looks up into Vasco’s concerned eyes and manages to smile at him, her mood lightened ever so slightly by his appearance. _I’m lucky to be blessed with such a competent assistant; especially one who cares so much about the people he treats._ “Yes, Vasco?”

“When I said you should go get some sleep, I wasn’t actually joking.”

His tone is light but she can hear the underlying worry. “I know,” she sighs. “I know. I thought if I just sat down for a little while instead…” But a brief rest is no substitute for sleep, and she should know better, really she does, but it feels so wrong to succumb to unconsciousness when people under her care are still awake and suffering…

“Go.” A gentle nudge breaks her from her train of thought and she glances up at Vasco again. There is a slight smile on his lips, and a softness in his eyes as he looks at her. “Working yourself to the bone won’t help them, and we’ve got it under control for now. Sleep, Hypatia, and come back rested. It’s going to get better soon.”

xxx

 

It doesn’t get better, soon or otherwise.

 Duke Abele continues to steadily increase the production demands on the silver mines, at the cost of the miners’ health, and it seems like every week there is some new outbreak of fever amongst the workers in the cramped underground conditions, along with the usual cases of black spittle and severe bronchial distress.

All that would be bad enough on its own, but as the weeks crawl on into months, the bloodfly situation gradually worsens too, a creeping malevolent blight on Karnaca. The number of cases coming into Addermire are steadily climbing, the trickle becoming a flood, and they can’t work fast enough to dam the flow.

 The buzzing drone of the bloodflies seems to have taken up permanent residence in Hypatia’s ears too, surrounded as she is by the insects day and night. Two of the nearby treatment rooms have emptied, and now contain carefully controlled hives; she harvests fresh ingredients once a day for a new attempt at improving the Addermire Solution (good but not good enough, not a _cure_ ).

Whenever she is not desperately trying to cure the bloodfly fever, the rest of her days are filled with the sick and the dying. She sits by the bedside of a miner she worked fruitlessly for four hours to save, his internal bleeding in the end too severe to overcome, and holds his hand as he dies quietly and without fuss. She closes the eyes of a woman whose lungs gave out from the weight of the fine powdered silver lining them, and comforts the woman’s weeping brother, his own sobs interrupted by an endless hacking cough. (She is filled with a quiet, exhausted despair at the thought that he will soon be a patient of hers too.)

Hypatia has been awake for more than forty-eight hours when a boy ( _only nine years old)_ is rushed into her treatment room, covered in the livid insect stings that she knows all too well, and she digs deep, trying to find that old determination that she always used to feel at the sight of people who needed her help. It comes slowly, like a trickle of water welling from parched ground, and she lets it fill her as she goes to work. _I **will** save this boy’s life. I have too._

Vasco finds her sitting on the stairs outside her office two hours later, head in her bloodied hands.

“Hypatia, have to stop blaming yourself,” he insists. “You’re doing more than anyone else to stop the blasted fever, on top of your normal work –”

She can hear his words but they’re distant. Her mind is both blank and buzzing, foggy and exhausted, yet wired with grief-stricken energy. Her heartbeat throbs loudly in her ears and she almost thinks she can hear the faint drone of bloodflies. _I’m hearing things. I must be. The two specimen rooms are on the other side of the building._

“I think I’m going to sleep,” she says, not quite realising she’s said it out loud until Vasco halts mid-speech, looking relieved. He shepherds her off to bed and Hypatia barely pauses long enough to wash the boy’s blood off her hands ( _his mother’s cries fill the room, her grief echoing off the walls)_ before she stumbles into bed, falling gratefully into the black oblivion of sleep.

And then, falling somewhere else entirely.

xxx

Hypatia wakes in a strange place. She’s seen it a few times before, in dreams so deep they feel like endless falling, but this time is different. She is present, in a way she wasn’t before, and she leaves the strange, distorted version of her bedroom, stepping out onto a jagged spur of gleaming grey-black rock, hanging in nothingness. The void is a dark, stormcloud-grey, an ominous colour that seems different from what she remembers and a strong wind whips at her clothes and hair.

Then she turns and sees a young man ( _not a young man, look at his eyes, no, don’t, don’t look)_ , dressed in fine clothes, and he smiles, tilting his head. “Doctor Alexandria Hypatia. Celebrated doctor, alchemist and philosopher.” His voice ripples oddly, the sound of it ever so slightly distorted. “What a sad state of affairs you are currently in, despite your efforts. The bloodfly fever – or should I call it a plague? Not yet, but it could be, and soon. Or it might not.”

He shrugs his shoulders, and Hypatia focuses on getting her heart to climb back down out of her throat at the thought of the fever turning into a _plague._ When she thinks she can manage to speak again, she takes a deep breath and asks, “Why am I here?” She doesn’t bother asking for his name. This can be only one being and she’d be lying if she said she wasn’t afraid.

“Because you’re going to be very important in the coming days, Alexandria.” His black eyes reflect no light as he stares at her, but his tone is amused. “I’ve watched you toil and struggle and every life lost chips away a little bit more of your strength. And I wonder…how would you feel if I offered you the chance to save those lives?”

Hypatia stares at him and the hope that rises inside her is overwhelming, like a gasp of air to a drowning man. Mere seconds later, suspicion follows on its heels. “And what would be the price to pay for this gift?”

His mouth curves a little more and there’s the glint of teeth, something not precisely a smile. “It’s not _my_ price you’ll have to pay, Alexandria. That’s something you’ll have to ask yourself.”

Hypatia narrows her eyes but she can’t discern his meaning. She wrestles with herself for several, long, endless moments, but in the end, the choice is inevitable. The thought of not seeing dead bodies on her operating table, not feeling the last breath leave their lungs, their lifeless hand slip from her grasp…

No. In the end, it is really no choice at all.

“I accept your offer,” she says, and his smile widens. She sees a flash of teeth for an instant, oddly thin and elongated ( _wrong,_ says her mind, and shies away) and then the back of her left hand _burns._

She wakes up gasping for breath, all her veins tingling like they’ve been scorched from the inside out, and looks down at her hand. The Outsider’s Mark is striking, thick black lines standing out boldly against her pale skin, radiating out like a sunburst, or a compass, or –

_Or like the mark of a heretic. Which it is. Which you now are._ Hypatia swallows thickly, and brushes the fingertips of her right hand over it. It tingles slightly and she thinks for a moment that an odd wisp of black smoke rises from it. _It’s worth it,_ she reminds herself. _It’s worth it, for all the lives that will be saved._

xxx

The first time she rescues someone from the brink of death using forbidden, heretical magic, there is a witness.

She’s barely been awake for more than a minute after receiving the Mark when there’s a frantic hammering at her door. She hastily yanks on a pair of gloves and opens it to find Vasco, distressed and dishevelled, gasping, “I’m sorry, but we’re going to lose him –”

Hypatia takes off running and arrives to find the operating theatre awash with the blood. She’s barely aware of Vasco shooing his previous assistants out as she frantically works to stabilise the miner bleeding out on the table, his right lung slowly filling with blood.

It’s hard, bloody work but they’re almost there, he’s almost stable, when there’s a sudden relapse. She can _feel_ him slipping, sliding away from her, the glow of his life force dimming as his lung fails again, and doesn’t even _think_. She’s nearly forgotten the Mark at this point, but it’s instinct, not thought, that makes her _reach_ , with something other than her hands –

And then something opens up inside her, a well of power, deep and cold, like water from the icy depths of the ocean. The Mark flares gold, light shining faintly through her glove, and she feels the power surge, singing in her veins, burning and soothing simultaneously. It emerges in a pulse of white-gold light, wreathing her hands and there’s an exclamation of shock from Vasco, but she ignores it, entirely focused on her charge.

And it’s easy, so easy. She directs the power, flooding the man’s cells with energy, pulling, tugging, encouraging, nudging the damaged cells into realignment, sealing the tears, draining the blood from where it shouldn’t be and redirecting it where it should. She moves on, the Mark throbbing and burning gold, closing the wounds just below his ribs where the shattered mine support had driven foot-long splinters through his torso, and the man under her hands is suddenly whole, suddenly healthy in a way not even her most perfect surgeries could accomplish.

Hypatia lets the magic fade, dropping her hands to her side as she straightens up. And sees Vasco, white-faced and staring at her. “Hypatia,” he whispers, and she has never heard fear like this in his voice before. “What have you done?”

She can only look back at him, an entreaty in her eyes. Now that the desperate adrenaline has faded, and the all-too-brief blinding relief of _he survived_ , there is room for fear. “I had to, Vasco. I was offered – I was offered the chance to save them,” her voice falters and she looks down at the man on her table, the man who is bloodied but whole, whose brow is no longer creased with pain even in unconsciousness. “And it – it worked. He would be dead if not for – if not for the power I was given.”

Vasco laughs and it’s a jagged, painful sound; when he speaks, his tone is an odd combination of fearfulness and almost fond disbelief. “Only you, Hypatia. Only you would accept such a thing without thought to your own safety.”

She shakes her head, feeling the weariness sweep back. “Hardly. You give me too much credit, Vasco. But I weighed the possibility of my own life being cut short, in the event that I am discovered by the Overseers, against the many lives that would definitely end without intervention… I couldn’t. I couldn’t stand by.”

Vasco laughs again, and it’s quieter, more tired, and a great deal more fond. “I know, Hypatia. I know. It’s why I –” he trails off and she can’t hear the end of the sentence, but despite that and her weariness, she feels a faint, quietly happy smile pulling at her lips, reading the acceptance in his words despite the fear.

xxx

For the first time in a long time, Hypatia feels like she can breathe.

People still die, of course – there are those who reach her too late or are so badly injured she cannot juggle healing so many grievous wounds at once, or those inflicted with the latter stages of bloodfly fever, which remains infuriatingly difficult to treat by both magical and mundane means. But for the most part, despite the high number of patients streaming in on a weekly basis, the vast majority of the people who arrive at the Addermire Institute are walking out of it again.

Hypatia begins sleeping well again. Her dreams feature the Void a lot more than they ever did before  (occasionally she hears what she thinks is the sound of a woman’s voice, a whisper carried on the winds of the Void, which is odd given how starkly empty of life it is) but not even this can disturb her sleep, long-denied as it is.

They have to be careful of course; any patient whose wounds necessitates the use of magic are only attended to by herself and Vasco, and she has been never been more grateful to have such a wonderful, understanding person at her side. Her workload is reduced enough and her sleep is increased enough, that they have time to reinstate their half-day off once every fortnight. For the first time in months she looks at Vasco, _really_ looks at him, and she suddenly sees what she missed before, the warmth in his eyes when he looks at her and the fondness in his smile.

_Oh,_ she thinks, with dawning realisation and an answering flare of warmth. _Oh, I see._

And for a time, she reaches a state that she had almost previously forgotten; happiness.

xxx

It almost six months after receiving the Outsider’s Mark when it happens.

One of her assistant doctors has contracted bloodfly fever and Hypatia is helping to cover his shifts, when a young woman is rushed in, so badly wounded that Hypatia is not immediately sure whether they will even be able to help her or not.

It is clearly a case that will require more than mundane methods of healing, and Vasco ushers the more junior doctor out as she prepares to go to work. She’s discovered much about her powers in the intervening time and knows that when her mana runs dry, the connection to the Void slowing to a trickle, that she can pull strength from her own body to work the healing magic, although it leaves her dizzy and physically weak. She has also discovered, to her horror, that she can pull the strength from other’s bodies to supplement her mana too; a young man suffering from black spittle nearly died when she accidentally drew on his energy instead of her own. The Addermire Solution, surprisingly enough, also helps increase the rate at which her well of Void magic refills, although too much of it leaves her lightheaded and nauseous.

Hypatia is certain, as she hurries to the operating table, that this is going to one of those times where she needs to pull on more than her mana, and she is proved correct. Half an hour later, her well of magic has run dry and she has drawn energy from both her own and Vasco’s body (his arm outstretched in silent permission as she labours ceaselessly) and she has drunk all the Solution that it is possible for her to stomach.

Her head swims, her body aches and her arms tremble _but there is nothing left to give_ – any more physical energy and she will collapse. Hypatia looks at the young woman gasping and dying on the table and feels the light dimming within her, her life slipping further and further away –

She reaches deep, deep into the well of mana within and finds the barest trickle of magic still there. She pulls as hard as she can, ignoring the screaming strain in her arms, her legs, the burning in her veins, her white-hot pressure swelling at the back of her head and it hurts, it _hurts_ but she still reaches, determined –

Deeper –

Deeper –

Deeper –

And something _cracks._

xxx

Nothing changes. Not at first.

Hypatia wakes up three days later, with a throbbing skull and a strange feeling of gaping openness in her mind. Vasco checks her over, immense relief suffusing his every action. “I was worried you’d never wake up,” he remonstrates. “Please be more careful, Alexandria.”

She agrees without arguing, strangely shaken and feeling oddly exposed. Something has been torn open somewhere; there is an injury she can’t see or touch, but she knows it’s there. She goes back to work after another day of rest, however, and the feeling fades slowly over the following weeks. It seems like whatever damage she did to herself by overstretching has healed itself and Hypatia puts it from her mind, focusing entirely on her work once more.

It is two weeks later that she finds herself standing on her balcony in the middle of the night with no memory of how she got there. She blinks, suddenly taking in her surroundings with both surprise and concern. _More sleep,_ she mentally prescribes herself and returns to bed, ignoring the shiver of unease. As she drifts off again, she thinks she hears the faint sound of distant laughter, sharp-edged and malicious.

xxx

The blackouts become more common. Most times Hypatia wakes on her balcony, but she often finds herself in her private laboratory or on the rooftop of the Institute. The skin on her fingers is rough and reddened like she’s been climbing the crumbling brickwork without gloves to protect her hands, and the scent of saltwater and decay clings to her clothes.

Increasingly alarmed, she confides in Vasco and he sits by her side while she sleeps in an attempt to catch her in the act of sleepwalking or whatever this strangeness is. It never seems to happen in his presence though, and as she watches him leave her room one morning, Hypatia is convinced this time that she does hear laughter, far away and mocking. _Hypatia,_ a voice hisses, so faint it is nearly inaudible. _Hypaaaaatia…_

The urge to hide like a frightened child is nearly overwhelming and the celebrated doctor is rooted to the spot, fighting with her own impulses, as the laughter grows louder, like a distant oncoming storm.

xxx

Hypatia wakes to find herself lying on the cold stone floor and when she raises her head, finds herself looking directly at Duke Luca Abele, staring down at her with an oddly contemplative expression.

For a moment her mind is blank with confusion, then everything comes flooding back; the Duke’s annual visit to inspect the premises, the formal dinner between the two of them, her careful-worded request for more aid for the workers (the unspoken reproach for their condition in the first place) –

To her horror and embarrassment, Hypatia realises she has had one of her blackouts (she’s never had them during the day before, _why now_ ) and scrambles to her feet. “Duke Abele, my apologies, I must be overtired –”

“No, it is understandable,” the Duke says, waving a hand in a vague dismissive gesture. He is still regarding her with that thoughtful expression, underlain with something she can’t quite read. “I am not upset. The opposite, in fact.” This last he adds in a murmur so quiet she’s not sure she actually heard it at all.

They return to their dinner but Hypatia can’t relax, lingering embarrassment and unease compounded by the insidious whispers, louder than ever before.

Vasco is horrified when she returns to him after the meal with this new, unwelcome development and he paces agitatedly around the laboratory. Unable to keep it to herself anymore, she confesses to hearing the voice in addition to the blackouts (she’d been too scared to admit it before, too afraid that he would think she was crazy). He surprises her again by asking tentatively, in an undertone, if she thinks it is connected to Void. Almost as one, they glance at her Mark, hidden underneath her gloves.

“I don’t think so,” she says uneasily. She hadn’t thought of this, too worried about more mundane instability. “I…”

The silence deepens between them and in it, Hypatia hears a spiteful chuckle, echoing everywhere and nowhere, terrifyingly close.

xxx

She wakes with blood under her fingernails and on her breath and lurches to the toilet, vomiting until there’s nothing left in her stomach. She looks at herself in the mirror and her eyes are wrong, reddened and bloodshot and _for just a moment a different colour altogether_ –

She stumbles away with laughter ringing in her ears, loud and triumphant, whispers sliding under skin, too close, hooking in like claws and needles and she’s bleeding freely, warm blood sheeting down her arms –

Hypatia looks down at her own nails digging into her forearms, fresh blood welling around them and lets go with a strangled sound of shock. _What is this? What’s happening to me?_

_Sleep, Hypatia,_ the voice hisses, and she falls away again, down into the dark.

xxx

The Institute closes. The Duke’s insistence on increasing her protection has escalated to the point he no longer permits patients to come to Addermire. “It is more important you work on your serum to cure the bloodfly fever,” he tells her firmly and Hypatia knows it’s wrong, tries to argue, but her usual quick wits seem to escape her, lost in the fog that seems to surround her thoughts of late.

He leaves behind even more soldiers, who have increasingly felt more like jailors than guards, and Hypatia tries her best to work on improving the Solution in an attempt to get the restrictions lifted. However, the haze around her mind also extends to her work and thoughts slip from her grasp like minnows from the fishermen’s nets; she struggles with concepts that once came to her as easy as breathing.

Vasco remains at her side ( _where are the others? Did the Duke send them away?)_ and she increasingly turns to him for support. His face is lined with exhaustion and something very close to grief but he always answers her gently and does whatever she requests. She asks him why his eyes often seem so bright, with what looks like tears; he hesitates and then he answers that he is simply overtired. She pats his hand and sends away him to bed with a vaguely encouraging smile, and as he goes, a piece of paper flutters from his pocket.

She gets a brief glimpse of strange and unfamiliar runes scrawled across the paper before he picks it up, and she asks him what it is. He pauses for a long moment, then answers, “Something to make you better.”

“Am I sick?” she queries, vaguely surprised, and something like agony flickers across his face.

“Just a little,” he answers hoarsely but gently, before hurrying out of the room. Hypatia returns to her work with the feeling that she is missing something important ( _but that is not an unfamiliar feeling, not these days._ )

Then one day, Vasco is gone too, and Hypatia is alone, alone with the voice that whispers and crawls inside her skin.

xxx

_She is sleeping, sleeping somewhere deep and dark (wasn’t she awake just a moment ago?) but far above at the distant surface she can hearing screaming and shouting and the crackle-roar of stun mines denoting._

_Then something clamps hard around her left wrist, as cold and icy as the Void, and the pain that suddenly lances through her is agony beyond compare. She clutches at her head, convulsing, as the other voice screams and screams in pain and fury, **‘NO, NO, NO, I WON’T LET YOU –’** and it hurts so much it’s like her skull is splitting open –_

– and suddenly Hypatia is awake, gasping and trembling and staring wide-eyed up at the woman hovering over her, a careful supporting arm behind her shoulders. Her mouth and nose are covered by a purple-black scarf with gold detailing, but her eyes are a clear deep brown, her concerned gaze focused on Hypatia’s face.

“Alexandria Hypatia?” she asks.

The doctor nods, and then catches a glimpse of a familiar face over the woman’s shoulder. “Vasco!” she cries joyfully, trying in vain to rise to greet him, her shaking limbs not responding to her commands.

Her assistant smiles wanly at her, his tired, haggard face nonetheless filled with a deep, pervasive joy. “Hypatia.” His voice is choked as he stumbles to his knees beside her, clasping her trembling hand in his own. “I thought – I thought you would never return.”

“Why? Where did I go?” she asks, confused. Before he can answer, her attention is drawn by something unfamiliar adorning the wrist of her hand held tightly within his. Heretical bonecharms, like the kind she sometimes finds tucked amongst her patients’ clothes or belongings, but oddly spliced together into a sort of bracelet; a confused mishmash of bones and carved symbols and metal that nonetheless appear to have a kind of pattern to them. They feel icy cold against her skin and throb faintly with the pulse of the Void.

“What is this?” she questions, looking at her assistant. His answering smile is filled with exhaustion but also deep contentment. “Protection, Hypatia. Suppression and protection and clear-thinking, all melded into one. It took a long time to make, but Grim Alex figured out what I was doing before I could manage put it on you.” He casts a grateful look at the woman still supporting Hypatia’s shoulders, silently watching their exchange. “I owe this woman a debt I can never repay, for doing what I could not –” he breaks off with a low curse and a cough of pain, and despite her confusion over his words, Hypatia suddenly realises there is blood soaking through his clothes.

“Vasco!” She struggles upright, reaching for him with trembling hands. “You’re injured!”

He shakes his head with a strained smile. “Don’t trouble yourself.” His voice is tender, despite the pain. “I am only glad I got to see you return to yourself before the end.”

Increasingly alarmed by the tenor of his words, Hypatia brushes aside the collar of his shirt, and reels in horror at the bloody ruin of his torso. “ _What happened?”_ she breathes in shock, glancing up in time to see his smile waver.

“It’s okay, Hypatia – Alexandria –” he attempts to soothe, but she is already reaching for her mana, determine to mend the grievous wounds –

Only to feel the unfamiliar woman’s arms tighten in a vice-like grip about her shoulders. “Don’t,” the brown-eyed woman warns. Her tone is sympathetic but unyielding. “You can’t. Not without releasing her.”

_Who,_ Hypatia wants to ask, but the answer is suddenly apparent. She can feel… _something_. Something sleeping at the bottom of her well of mana, something cold and dark and bloody and gleeful. It feels…familiar, in a way that she shies away from thinking too hard about.

_But...there is another way._

“What if I could do it without drawing from my mana?” she asks, looking up at the woman. She looks thoughtful for a moment, then nods, and that is all the permission Hypatia needs, her hands moving swiftly to hover over Vasco’s chest.

“What –?” he asks, jerking back but Hypatia is already reaching, pulling, the pain spreading inside her like the prickling of needles.

“You’re hurt because of me, Vasco,” she says. “I don’t know how, but I know this is my fault. You’ll die because of me.” It tastes like the truth and she reads the anguished confirmation in his eyes, even as he shakes his head. She digs deeper, drawing out the energy from her blood, her muscles, and pouring it into him, sealing the wounds, purifying the poisonous infection in his flesh. Her Mark flares gold, throbbing in time with her pulse, the roar of blood in her ears.

“I will make amends,” she says, refusing to stop until he is safe, even as her bones sing with the strain and her heart falters in her chest.

“Hypatia, stop!” Distantly, she hears his cry of alarm, but more importantly, feels his last wound close under her hand. Gratefully, she collapses forward, barely aware of the arms that catch her as the darkness rises to swallow her – but it is darkness born of true exhaustion, not of the malevolent otherness that still sleeps within the depths of her mind.

_At least,_ she thinks as her eyes slide closed, _if I die, it will die with me._

And then she falls, swallowed up by warmth and darkness.

xxx

Hypatia wakes.

It takes a few moments for her to remember why this is surprising, as she struggles past the sluggishness of her thoughts. Then her eyes fly open and she attempts to lurch up upright.

Her weakened muscles refuse to obey and she falls back to the mattress, panting for breath. There is an exclamation, then hurried footsteps nearby and Vasco suddenly appears in her line of vision. His brown hair is tousled and there creases on his face like he’s been asleep up until very recently. “Alexandria!”

The mere sight of him, so clearly alive and well, makes her slump back against the pillows in overwhelming relief. “Vasco – Bartholomeus,” she says, reaching out to clasp his hands. “Thank goodness. I wasn’t sure –” Her voice cracks mid-sentence, but she manages a smile for him instead, blinking back the threatening tears.

He shakes his head, smiling as he gently twines his fingers with hers. “You saved me. And terrified me actually – I thought you’d killed yourself in the process. It was a very near thing in the end; you’ve been asleep for almost two weeks.” He pauses, fingers tightening compulsively over hers. “I wasn’t actually sure whether you’d wake up at all.”

Hypatia squeezes his hands back gently. “Well, it looks like you saved me too, Bartholomeus. More than once, if I’m remembering our conversation correctly.” She frowns at that, feeling a slight chill creeping in. “What _has_ been happening over the past few months, Bartholomeus? I feel…I feel so clear-headed in comparison to how I was before. It felt like I was drifting along in a fog for so long…”

A shadow passes briefly over his face, a tangle of painful emotions, before he smiles with clear effort. “That’s…a long story, actually. One I think should wait a bit, until you’re entirely recovered.”

Hypatia wants to argue but something makes her hold her tongue; a combination of the pain that had been so clearly visible on his face, and of her own deep sense of unease. “Very well,” she agrees, smiling back, just as there’s a loud thump somewhere above her head, followed immediately by an irritated shout.

For the first time, Hypatia becomes aware of her surroundings, and a quick scan of the room tells her instantly that she’s on a ship of some description, white midday sunlight streaming in through the porthole. She sends a questioning look at her assistant and he grins broadly. “Welcome to the Dreadful Wale. Her captain is Meagan Foster and she currently carries three passengers – ourselves, and Lady Emily Kaldwin, Empress of the Isles.”

“ _What?_ ” Hypatia exclaims, thoroughly startled.

Vasco laughs at her astonishment, his brown eyes bright with mirth. “There’s been a lot going on this past month in the world at large, Alexandria, although not much of it good, it seems…”

Hypatia listens as he fills her in and on one level, she’s utterly astounded by the upheaval in the Empire – but another part of her brain is still entirely devoted to watching her assistant for any signs of strain. His face is still tired and he looks more careworn than she’s ever seen before, but there’s good-humour in his expression and a light in his eyes that’s been absent since she fell ill.

The sunlight is warm, the rock of the boat is soothing, and Bartholomeus’ mere presence fills her with such contentment Hypatia would be happy to remain here, suspended in this moment forever.

_We’ll be okay. I know we will._

**Author's Note:**

> A/N: I also thought it would be cool if Grim Alex was created by Hypatia fracturing her mind through overuse of her magic. Because let’s face it, healing is way too cool a power not to have strings attached (plus the Outsider’s an arse when he wants to be.) I kind of envisioned it being a little like the corrupted bonecharms, in that the power has bad and good effects (but the bad effect only kicks in through major overuse.) I also imagine that Hypatia has the ability to unlock multiple powers just like the other Marked, but focuses on healing to the exclusion of all else (because duh, that’s why she accepted the Mark in the first place.) The idea for the whole healing people using her body’s energy (AKA health) instead of mana also came from the bonecharms, because I remembered picking up one that let you substitute mana for health if you were drowning. 
> 
> Anyway, thank you for reading this! I hope you enjoyed it – if so, please leave a comment! ^_^
> 
> P.S. Poor Hypatia has some rough times ahead in this AU when Vasco eventually fills her in on what she did, both to other people and to him. But hey, at least he’s alive! And he’s already forgiven her, even if she’s going to be swimming in guilt for ages.


End file.
